(2004-04-21) — Democrat presidential hopeful John Forbes Kerry today took aim at “corporate fat cats who try to buy political influence” by raising money for Mr. Kerry’s campaign.

“Wealthy elitists contributed much of the $57 million that my campaign took in over past three months,” said Mr. Kerry. “They know that this money will inevitably influence my decisions when I’m president. I’ll be biased toward my wealthy cronies. After all, look what happened to George Bush. How could I escape the same fate?”

Mr. Kerry called on the United Nations to limit campaign contributions from the wealthy.

“When I’m president, I’ll work with Secretary-General Kofi Annan to create an international income tax on the obscenely rich-those who earn more than $125,000 per year,” he said. “We need to send a message to these fat cats that they’re no better than the ordinary, middle-class slobs who have nothing left to give to my campaign after they’ve paid their union dues and contributed to public broadcasting.”

(2004-04-21) — After bowing to pressure to release his Vietnam-era military records, Democrat presidential hopeful John Forbes Kerry today adamantly refused to release his U.S. Senate records.

“It’s one thing to probe into a candidate’s military service and medical records,” said Mr. Kerry. “But frankly what I did, or did not do, in the privacy of the U.S. Senate chambers is nobody’s business.”

Critics are particularly interested in seeing any comprehensive health care bill that Mr. Kerry has sponsored. On the campaign trail, he been a tireless advocate of health coverage for all Americans, but in more than a decade as a Senator, no evidence has emerged that he wrote or sponsored any such legislation.

“Legislating is not the only way to create law,” said Mr. Kerry. “When I’m president, I plan to issue an executive order forcing the Supreme Court to create a new civil right to comprehensive health care coverage.”

(2004-04-20) — Campaigning for the re-election of U.S. Senator Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania yesterday, President George Bush called the incumbent Senator “the best so-called ‘Republican’ candidate who can probably win in November and maintain the appearance of a Republican majority in the Senate.”

It was strong praise for a candidate who opposes the president’s own views on issues like abortion, tax cuts and the USA Patriot Act, and counts among his supporters liberal financier George Soros and former President Bill Clinton’s one-time deputy chief of staff, Harold Ickes.

Mr. Bush characterized Mr. Specter’s opponent in the April 27 primary, Congressman Pat Toomey, as a “good, conservative Republican, but one who lacks the most important qualification: incumbency.”

“Even though my personal views align more with Pat Toomey’s,” said the president, “I still find myself siding with Mr. Specter, as if drawn by some mysterious force that roves to and fro across the land, placing strategy above integrity.”

In exchange for the president’s campaign backing, Mr. Specter, the likely chairman of the Senate judiciary committee in the next session, promised to support “any judge Mr. Bush nominates who’s not clinically insane or pro-life…which is a redundancy in my view.”

(2004-04-18) — Hamas, the Palestinian social services agency, announced today that its recently-appointed leader Abdel Azziz Rantisi died this weekend of natural causes.

Mr. Rantisi apparently perished from the same disease which took the life of his predecessor, Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin less than one month ago.

“The autopsy showed that Abdel Azziz Rantisi died of a virulent, contagious kind of cancer that destroys the mind, and by natural cause-and-effect, the body,” said an unnamed Palestinian coroner. “Although you may have read that Rantisi and Yassin died from Israeli missile attacks, that was just the coup de grace. The condition that really killed them is like HIV. You don’t die of HIV, you die from something else because you have AIDS. These men died of missile attacks, but the attacks were caused by the wasting disease that infected their minds and hearts.”

(2004-04-17) — A new book about Bob Woodward’s new book, Plan of Attack, reveals that President George Bush did not tell some top aides what he had told Bob Woodward in an interview in which he revealed that he didn’t tell some top aides about the early stages of planning for a war in Iraq.

The newer of the two books, The Making of Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack, will be released next week, one day after Plan of Attack appears in bookstores. The book reveals that the source of “shocking” quotes which Woodward’s book attributes to President Bush, may actually be President Bush himself, who sat down for an interview with Mr. Woodward.

“It’s amazing how cold-blooded and secretive Bush is,” said the unnamed author of The Making Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack, “First he kept his war plans secret, and then he kept the details of his interview with Bob Woodward secret. This book demonstrates that Bob Woodward is the only man in Bush’s circle of friends with whom he can share his deepest secrets.”

One chapter in The Making of Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack reveals speculation that the reporter who helped break the Watergate break-in story in the early 1970s may also be the anonymous source, known as ‘Deep Throat’, who provided much of the information for his Watergate stories in The Washington Post.

“Deep Throat had to be Woodward,” said the unnamed author, “Who else has such access to the hearts and minds of our nation’s leaders. For more than 30 years, the most powerful people in Washington have trusted Bob Woodward with things they wouldn’t tell their own spouses.”

(2003-04-17) — Just days after Democrat presidential hopeful John Forbes Kerry announced that he needs to “define” himself, a new poll shows that 87 percent of his supporters are eager to learn “who he is.”

“This is good news for our campaign,” said an unnamed Kerry spokesman. “Our timing couldn’t be better to launch a definition effort just when the people who voted for him in the primaries and come out to his rallies are basically asking to see some ID.”

At a rally this week at the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Kerry shared the stage with rockers Jon Bon Jovi and Blink-182 in an effort to persuade 5,000 typically non-voting college students to throw President George Bush out of office.

“I want to tell you a little bit about who I am,” Mr. Kerry boomed above the din of the crowd. “On the ballot in November, I’ll be one of the names that isn’t George W. Bush. I’ll be the one who spent more money than any other candidate to prove that I’m not George W. Bush. There…now, I think I’ve shared my heart with you and you know where I stand on the issue.”

Nineteen-year-old Cassandra Leventhal, a Pitt sophomore from New Castle, Pennsylvania, stood in rapt attention while Mr. Kerry spoke, holding a cigarette lighter aloft and occasionally shouting ‘Free Bird!’.”

Asked if she had a better understanding of the candidate after the rally, Ms. Leventhal said, “John Kerry must really rock if Bon Jovi and Blink-182 are willing to share the stage with him. I’m going back to my dorm to download some of his songs from iTunes. His last name reminds me of my favorite band, Rooney, so I hope he’s like Rooney.”

(2004-04-16) — An audiotape, purportedly from al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden, offers to cease attacks on the United States, and her interests abroad, if Sen. John Forbes Kerry is elected president.

“I’m offering a truce to the United States,” said the voice on the tape, which unnamed experts have confirmed is probably Mr. bin Laden. “Elect the junior Senator from Massachusetts and I will treat that as tantamount to an end to hostilities against al Qaeda and her sister organizations.”

A spokesman for the Kerry presidential campaign said the truce offer “demonstrates that Mr. Kerry is the only candidate who can save America from the threat of terror.”

The unnamed source speculated that Mr. bin Laden would prefer to deal with Mr. Kerry because “they are both intellectuals…you know, masterminds.”

(2004-04-14) — National Public Radio (NPR) today announced it would acquire all of the assets of the new, but financially-troubled, liberal radio network known as “Air America.”

Assets include former comedians Al Franken and Janeane Garafalo, as well as several small bottles of spring water and a full pallet of Mr. Franken’s book, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.”

NPR’s development department will immediately begin on-air fundraising to support Air America operations.

“Contributors who give at least $100 will receive an autographed copy of Mr. Franken’s book,” said an unnamed NPR executive. “Donors at the $200 level will receive the book, without the autograph. And listeners who give $500 or more will receive a small bottle of spring water.”

Air America was knocked off the air in Los Angeles and Chicago today due to its alleged failure to pay $1 million to the owner of the two stations.

“On behalf of the American people, NPR will assume all of Air America’s debt,” said the NPR source. “The national audience for this kind of programming isn’t big enough to sustain two networks. We own the niche…at least on radio.”

(2004-04-14) — Despite calls for her resignation from the 9/11 commission, former Clinton administration deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick today announced an “innovative plan” to prevent the commission’s eventual recommendations from being put into practice.

The proposal, reminiscent of Ms. Gorelick’s now-famous 1995 finding which protected potential terrorists from uncomfortable legal proceedings, would place “a wall between the commission’s findings and actual implementation.”

“We must maintain the constitutional separation between testimony and action,” said Ms. Gorelick. “If the 9/11 commission findings resulted in organizational or procedural changes in government, it would have a chilling effect on such panels. How could you get qualified people like me to serve on commissions if they feared that their speculative theories and ideas would be proven impractical through implementation?”

(2004-04-14) — In response to increasing pressure from White House reporters and Democrats, President George Bush today released a written statement admitting he has “made mistakes” and apologizing to the American people and the people of Iraq.

During last night’s nationally-televised presidential news conference, Mr. Bush said he was unprepared for questions about his mistakes in office. He steadfastly refused to apologize for the 9/11 terror attacks. Instead, he again advanced the now-discredited theory that terrorists, not U.S. government officials, were to blame for the terrorism.

However, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that “after much soul searching” last night, the president wrote the following confession and apology:

“I have made mistakes during my time in the White House. I frittered away months trying to convince the United Nations that it should free the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator who never fulfilled the terms of surrender from the Gulf War and who continued to fire upon Coalition aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone.

It was an error in judgment to think that the U.N. Security Council would ever do anything more than talk in moralistic platitudes. My desire to build an international coalition from nations like France and Germany only served to delay the inevitable liberation of Iraq. I apologize to the people of Iraq and others in the Arab world, yearning to breathe free, who have placed their hopes in the only superpower that has the will and the way to set them free.

This confession is good for the soul, so I would also like to admit that it was a mistake for me to keep Bill Clinton’s counter-terrorism chief on my staff. I know now that Richard Clarke’s presence in the White House was a knife hovering behind the shoulder blades of not only my staff, but of the American people who would later be betrayed by Mr. Clarke’s desire for self-aggrandizement. I’m sorry for that.

I’d also like to admit that it was a mistake to think that I could make friends with the Democrats by pouring funding into their top political agency, the National Education Association, or by creating a huge new medicare prescription drug entitlement. I can see now that no matter how often and how much you feed an alligator, he’s always looking past the food in your hand and hankering for your arm, your heart, your head. My mistake…and I’m truly sorry.

One last thing: In hindsight, it appears that I was premature in declaring an end to major combat operations in Iraq. I thought we had toppled the dictator. But as long as vermin like al-Sadr seek to glorify themselves, using false religion to oppress the people, the dictator lives on. He lives on in the hearts of the radical clerics who killed and then mutilated the bodies of Americans as surely as if their own hands were stained black from the charred flesh. I’m sorry that my statement caused some to believe that the war in Iraq had ended. It has continued for more than a decade and will not end until evil men like al-Sadr are purged and the cowl of fear is lifted from the face of the Iraqi people.”